


Cut Your Losses

by jeweniper



Series: Fic Amnesty 2016 [3]
Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Alternate Universe, Death, M/M, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-30
Updated: 2016-11-30
Packaged: 2018-09-03 10:25:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8708851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeweniper/pseuds/jeweniper
Summary: Purgatory is a train ride, and you don't get to decide when you get off. But no worries. It isn't a total loss.





	

When Kurapika blinks awake, he sees the curve of his fingers through a haze of gold. But as the fog of sleep dissipates, he recognizes it as the strands of his own hair and sits up, polyester of his suit sliding along the threadbare cotton seat. He scans the interior of the train car curiously, with nothing to acknowledge him but the sheen of white glaciers outside, the low rumble of wheels over track. Where memory of how he got here should be, there is nothing.

“You’re here.”

So he isn’t alone. Turning towards the voice, he isn’t surprised to see an absolute mouse of a woman who is curled over herself on the seat like some tree bowed over by constant stress. But her eyes are bright, and considering. “Who are you?” He asks, voice cracking with longtime disuse.

“My name is Senritsu. We’re headed to the same place, but I’m not quite the one you’re here for.”

He bristles at that, recalling his previous struggle in a wave of muscle aches and latent mourning. “Don’t act like you know me. No one needs me anymore.”

She wrings her hands and tips her head apologetically, eyes maintaining their intensity. “Oh, please don’t get cross with me, Kurapika.” She straightens suddenly, head cocked, and then addresses him more insistently than before. “There isn’t a lot of time. Just remember to see the whole picture, all right? A salesman would never offer a deal that good.”

His hands clench into fists. “What on Earth are you talking about?”

She smiles warmly at him. “I can’t really help you more than this. It isn’t a total loss.” She looks past him.

Just as his mouth opens in response he hears the bleak whine of the car door. He turns to study long fingers which shift to reveal the coiled smile of the man in the doorway. Spying fuchsia skinny jeans stretched over long legs, he frowns. They match the man’s chin-length hair to a T, and Kurapika decides he’s dressed as an eccentric—the same kind he’d ambushed for mutilating his nephew for fun not too long ago.

“Senritsu.” His voice is a spool of wire, tauntingly smooth and without a hint of warmth. “So we meet again."

“They’ve decided my skills do more harm than good.” She wrinkles her nose and gives him a disdainful look. “But you’re not supposed to be here.”

The smile inches higher and he reaches one long finger into a diamond-printed breast pocket, unearthing a fat square of gum that he pops into his mouth. “No, just looking for a bit of fun.” He whips his head towards Kurapika on the bench suddenly and purrs. “Revenge killings, huh? How would you like to play with me?”

At that moment the car is swallowed by a great beast of shadow, the tunnel around them leeching the air for any remaining warmth. Or perhaps the gold sheen of the man’s eyes is to blame for the sudden cold, the hunger with which he eyes Kurapika making his hair stand on end.

Senritsu jumps to her feet at the same time Kurapika does. “You can’t!” She hisses, breath puffing angrily in the low light. “Hisoka you _cannot_ fight here!”

A giggle of delight slides out from his lips. “Who’s going to stop me?”

Kurapika trudges through the swamp of his mind trying to remember where his weapons could be when they breach the other end of the tunnel. A grey light stems from the bare trees outside and drapes over the car’s interior, turning everything gaunt but the boy who is now sitting directly across from him.

Senritsu heaves a quiet sigh and reclaims her seat while Hisoka eyes the newcomer with mild curiosity. Kurapika is still, wondering if he’s about to fight the eccentric or not.

“Whoa!” The boy jumps up and unfolds like a shocked accordion, startling Kurapika and no one else. “Where the hell did you guys come from?”

The boy is quite a bit taller than Kurapika, but his booming voice holds an unshakable quality of _youngness_ , like he’s sure his own voice had, once. He eyes his ill-fitted slacks and too-tight dress shirt and sinks silently into his seat. Poor thing doesn’t even know how to dress.

At this point Hisoka is the only one standing, and he straightens out of his defensive stance to address the boy. “What were you doing before you got here?”

“I’m headed to a job interview,” he answers proudly, scratching the tip of his nose.

“ _Really_ now?” He sounds much more interested than before.

“Yeah, in a little family clinic. I’ve always wanted to be a doctor! It’s right by the sea.”

Hisoka turns his shining eyes on Senritsu, who gazes away from him to stare at the distorted trunks out the window. It all strikes Kurapika as unnecessarily odd until he realizes that he still has no recollection of how he got here. “So you’re going to be a doctor?” He asks.

“Ah, no. I couldn’t afford school. But I can help out in the office! Are you interviewing too? I’m the most qualified, but I can wish you luck,” he offers. Despite the comment his eyes are warm, the brown reminding him very bizarrely of the sun.

He misses the sun.

As though in answer the scenery outside momentarily flickers, to show trees lush with coverage and a plane of bright blue. “See! The ocean!” But when he turns back towards Kurapika, the vision is gone.

He seems almost more excited about the water than the job itself, a thought that causes warm flowers to bloom in the edges of Kurapika’s soul. “I wish you luck.”

“Wish both of us luck!”

“Right,” he says with the ghost of a smile, “both of us.”

“If we ever get there, that is,” the boy amends with a complicated expression towards the window. “We never seem to get any closer, and I’ve been riding all day…”

A portion of one of the distant glaciers splinters off and dives below, rumbling loud enough that Kurapika almost misses Senritsu’s whisper from the corner. She slaps a hand over her mouth, as though the words had escaped unbidden, but it’s already too late.

“What did you say?” He and Hisoka question simultaneously.

“He won’t…make it,” she repeats, voice a shiver in the air more than a sound. The boy is unaffected, mesmerized by his personal view of the bright sea. Sleet begins to fall around them, oozing over the windows of the car and into the crevices of Kurapika’s heart, chilling him. He thinks of his nephew, another bright light snuffed all too soon. _It isn’t a total loss_ , Senritsu’s words replay in his ear.

“I can save him.”

Senritsu starts as though struck by lightning, but Hisoka is on him first. “Oh yes,” he lilts, sliding against Kurapika on the seat. “You can save him, with my help.”

“See, I’m not from around here,” he continues, silencing Senritsu with a look. He pops his gum into the air and then reaches through the space left behind, right into the air itself. When his arm returns he is gripping an intricately carved iron pen, blossoming with roses the size of a dime, save for the large one at the top. “And unlike, well, everyone who rides this train, I can come and go as I please.” He grins, teeth perfectly straight and perfectly white, without a hint of malice beyond that swimming in his eyes.

“What do you mean,” he interrupts, a passing cloud dousing the car in a smudge of darkness.

“Exactly what I said. Everyone here is stuck until their destination, that means our sweet little seer in the corner, and that also means you. But for some reason,” he leans away now, opening Kurapika’s vision to the boy across the car, “our friend here seems to be going someplace else, someplace he remembers. This means he won’t be going anywhere at all.”

Kurapika swallows the ice in his throat. “What must I do?”

“Don’t—“

“All you have to do,” Hisoka says over Senritsu’s protest, “is run some errands for me, considering your background I think you’d be good at it. It won’t even take _that_ long, considering. Besides, it’ll be a lot better than what they’ve planned up top, and you can save our boy here from a train ride to nowhere. It’s a win-win, wouldn’t you say?”

Kurapika is almost entirely sure that what Hisoka plans won’t be better than whatever is currently in store for him. But when he glances over at the boy again, pressed against the glass and vibrating with optimism, disagreeing sounds terribly unappealing. “Sure, I’ll help” he grasps the proffered pen and winces when the rose at the top punctures the skin of his thumb, drinking from him until the whole pen gains a rusted sheen and sinks with acquired weight.

“Really?” The boy is suddenly back in the conversation, but it isn’t surprise that steals Kurapika’s breath so much as the look of pure joy on his face. Beneath his glasses his cheeks slope in a kiss of rose, making way for a crescent of teeth that curve upwards for Kurapika to see. “I don’t know why, but that makes me really happy. Name’s Leorio, by the way. You’re pretty cool, man. Even if I’m a shoe in for the position, I’ll never forget you.”

Perhaps it’s because all who would otherwise remember him are already gone, or maybe the smile is just a little too bright, but the declaration unearths a root of something warm and fluttery in him that died long ago.

He doesn’t have long to ponder. In a grating cacophony the train slams into something large, shuddering throughout its length before the dim lights pop on the impact. The windows fracture into a confetti of shards and the car floods not with ice cold air as Kurapika expects but with a wave of translucent sea water. It rushes to them and clings to their bodies like whispers of regret, but curiously Kurapika is not wet, and neither is Senritsu, who continues staring out where the window once was with the same hunch as when she first spoke. Despairing, Kurapika fights the tremors of collision to catch a glimpse of Leorio, who has drifted out the window but remains close by, entwined with the train by the bar puncturing his torso.

“Let’s go Kurapika,” Hisoka commands, standing with the surety of a man on dry land. Kurapika would cry if he still had the ability. He had promised to help, and yet again he could do nothing. But on second glance, Leorio’s face beneath the inflammation of bruising and the embrace of the sun appears to be at peace.

And, he isn’t stuck on the train anymore.

So Kurapika gives him a final smile and turns to follow Hisoka out of the door he originally entered. It isn’t a total loss.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fic that I was very excited to tackle, inspired by my friend's dream, which she described with, “my friend and I were on a train going to places that were ever colder and more dismal, like walking across glaciers as they cracked beneath our feet, and she also met a boy on the train who was destined to be lost at sea.” How cool is that? Unfortunately I never thought I could do the idea justice, and thus it sat in my docs.
> 
> I intended it for it to be shippy-er, and less sad (though it isn't quite sad), but this is what it has become and I'm glad that it's here. Presenting my piece for Fic Amnesty Day 3, I hope you can understand it! Please enjoy!


End file.
